English Corner

English Corner

Children Learning a Foreign Language

The field of teaching young learners, particularly in teaching English, has expanded enormously in the last 10 years but is only just beginning to be researched. Piaget and Vygotsky high lighting key ideas from their work that can inform how we think of the child as a language learner.

a. JEAN PIAGET – The child as active learner

Piaget concluded that intellectual development is the result of the interaction of hereditary and environmental factors. Piaget discovered that children think and reason differently at different periods in their lives. Although every normal child passes through the stages in exactly the same order, there is some variability in the ages at which children attain each stage. Sensor motor - birth to 2 years; preoperational - 2 years to 7 years; concrete operational - 7 years to 11 years; and formal operational (abstract thinking) - 11 years and up. In the sensor motor stage, the mental structures are mainly concerned with the mastery of concrete objects. The mastery of symbols takes place in the preoperational stage. In the concrete stage, children learn mastery of classes, relations, and numbers and how to reason. The last stage deals with the mastery of thought. Intellectual growth involves two fundamental processes: assimilation, and accommodation. When the action occurs without causing any change in the child assimilation happens; on the other hand, when the child adjusts himself to the environment in some ways, accommodation is involved. Piaget espoused active discovery learning environments. Piaget emphasize that activity is essential Children need to explore, to manipulate, to experiment, to question, and to search out answers for themselves. Children are hoped can adapt through experiences with objects in their environments However, this does not mean that children should be allowed to do whatever they want. Teachers as facilitators of knowledge - they are there to guide, to stimulate, to give the guidance in student’s creation. These concepts supply the students as a active participants with a learning environment that encourages children to initiate, to complete and to have creativity or discovery in their own activities.

b. Vygotsky

Underlying Vygotsky theory is the central observation that development and learning take place in a social context. For Vygotsky the child is an active learner in a world full of other people. In a whole range of ways, adults mediate the world for children and make it accessible to them. With the help of adults, children can do and understand much more than they can on their own. Vygotsky used the idea of the ZPD (zone of proximal development) to give a new meaning to intelligence. Vygotsky suggested that intelligence was better measured by what a child can do with skilled help. Vygotsky saw that child as first doing things in a social context, with other people and language helping in various ways, and gradually shifting away from reliance on others to independent action and thinking. In the internalizing process, the interpersonal, joint talk and joint activity, later becomes intrapersonal, mental action by one individual.

c. Bruner – Constructivist theory

Bruner’s notion of scaffolding develops this idea to show how adults can support children in the construction of understanding. Parents who scaffold tasks effectively for children did the following:

a. they made the children interested in the task;

b. they simplified the task, often by breaking it down into smaller steps;

c. they kept the child on track towards completing the task by reminding the child of what the goal was;

d. they pointed out what was important to do;

e. they controlled the child’s frustration during the task;

f. they demonstrated an idealized version of the task.

More over, good scaffolding was tuned to the needs of the child and adjusted as the child became more competent. Scaffolding has been transferred to the classroom and teacher-pupil talk. The increased complexity of language provides a space for language growth; if the new language is within a child’s ZPD, child will make sense of it and star the process of internalizing it. Routines then can provide opportunities for meaningful language development; it will open up many possibilities for developing language skills.